Cervical injuries are among the most frequent and potentially debilitating of all injuries. Significant factors that contribute to this high incidence are chronic disuse, motor vehicle accidents and sports activities. It is difficult to deal with these injuries because cervical muscles are one of the least conditioned muscle groups due to a lack of conditioning devices and the fear of injury in performing cervical exercises.
Previous cervical training methods have been very inconsistent with very little, if any, quantification of the results of these methods. Past conditioning has been in the form of light stretching with some resistance either manually or by a free weight attached to the user by some type of harness or the like. More recently, chiropractic methods have been used which involve manipulation of the cervical region of a patient by the practitioner.
There is nothing presently available in a single apparatus with multi-direction movement capacity which can be used for both evaluation and conditioning while isolating specific muscles of a person suffering from a cervical injury. Furthermore, there is no current method of providing controlled progressive resistance training in the cervical region for treating injuries such as whiplash where a balance between flexion and extension need to be restored. Also, it is important to have a full range of flexion in combination with movements such as rotation and again there is nothing currently satisfactory to train these combination movements.